


Dark Moon

by drabbleandfluff



Category: Bleach
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-12
Updated: 2012-07-12
Packaged: 2017-11-09 19:51:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/457742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drabbleandfluff/pseuds/drabbleandfluff
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The war with the Quincy has been won, and yet the Quincy are still victorious.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dark Moon

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the bleach_contest comm on lj. Prompt: week #77 - dark
> 
> Warnings for character deaths; numerous and unforgiving. Please heed the warnings if you don't like unhappy fic.

Renji tilts his chin up, his eye roaming-- searching the nighttime sky. Darkness, like a shroud, covers the vast cosmos high above his head. Tonight, it seems even the stars appear muted, in deference.

Down on the Livings’ earth, Renji knows this night is described as their calendar’s _dark moon_ \-- the last night in the lunar cycle, when the moon, in perfect alignment with the sun and the Earth, is not visible to the eye.

Appropriate, he thinks.

 

The war with the Quincy is over. It had taken all of three days.

 

It had taken three days.

Ten captains.

Eleven vice-captains.

78,000 shinigami soldiers.

Hundreds of thousands of countless, nameless souls in the Runkongai.

 

Renji is numb. He still believes that he will (that he can), wake soon (somehow), to find that this has all been a terrible dream; _a nightmare_.

That when he does manage to startle himself awake, a reassuring touch will ground him and a deep, sleep-roughened voice will soothe him.

But he knows such whimsical thoughts are those left for children. And for lovers left behind.

 

Only four days ago Renji remembers being at the Kuchiki mansion, having been invited for dinner with Rukia and his captain. He can still recall (he can still _feel_ ) the cool breeze as it brushed across his forehead as they’d all sat later that evening, with the shoji doors wide open, enjoying the nighttime view and a few bottles of sake.

He can recall (still _smell_ ) the barely-there scent of sakura blossoms on the crisp midnight air.

He can recall (still _taste_ )…

 

_He could still taste Byakuya…_

 

 

It slams into him-- Renji’s knees almost give out-- his vision swims as the emptiness in his chest suddenly explodes-- bursts forth and blooms into glass-like shards fighting its way towards the surface of his skin.

He gasps, fights for breath; heaving. His brows furrow as the pain-- the crushing pain-- twists around his spine. With an iron will he has somehow acquired (and in actuality, he knows _exactly_ whom he’s learned it from) Renji gets himself back in control.

He blows out a shaky sigh, choking to hold back the sob that threatens to push him into the abyss, _again_. Clenching his hands at his side, Renji wants to curl into himself, rock himself to sleep (no. no! _he wants to wake up_ ).

 

Renji remembers days of waking up: as a child-- wrapped around Rukia for warmth in the dilapidated slums of Inuzuri, as a new recruit-- getting up before the cold-dawn mornings for drills at the Academy, as a novice fukutaicho-- baking in the mid-morning sun too hungover to move after a night of hard drinking-- with Shuuhei’s foot in his spleen, and Izuru’s elbow as his pillow.

 

Just a handful of days prior, he had family and friends, and now…

Now, he could count the amount of Gotei survivors on one hand.

 

Unohana taicho-- _Unohana Sou-taicho_ , concludes her words of prayer, of solace or comfort, Renji doesn’t even know. He hasn’t been listening. Her usual dulcet tones of quiet and deadly persuasion are tinged with sorrow and defeat. Kusashiji fukutaicho stands silently at her side, all childlike vivacity and exuberance, for the moment, gone.

 

Unohana Sou-taicho speaks of rebuilding. Of remembering. Of moving forward.

 

Renji can’t even stand on two feet and not fight for breath, let alone consider the future. _How was he to even_ attempt _to pick up the pieces and move forward, when there were no pieces to speak of?_

He wants to scream. To cry to the heavens that this-- _this is wrong._ That he and Rukia did not fight and scrape their way out of Inuzuri for _this._ That he and Kuchiki taicho had not overcome… _everything_ ; for _this._

 

Ten pyres stand massive and foreboding on the barren Hill; before them all-- the five remaining members of the Gotei. Those divisions that lost both captain and vice captain would burn together, a send off that hopes, perhaps, that their souls would find the company comforting.

Byakuya would go it alone tonight.

Renji would wait here.

 

Tears that burn and blur his sight fall freely from Renji’s unblemished eye. His other is covered by a black eye patch that matches the cover of the night’s sky. It matches the bleakness of his soul and the empty eye socket within, both hollow and dark.

 

All words and noise fall into silence.

To Renji, a signal of the end of the ceremony.

He steps forward and gives the command, a hoarse rasp is all he is able to project, his throat having been sliced in half, of he himself almost having been decapitated in battle. He echoes words he had stood at attention to, not three days ago--

“Light the fires.”


End file.
